Looking at the state of Dr. Jenner, I realized that the situation could potentially turn dire.
So I did the most logical thing I could in this situation.
I slowly held my hands up, indicating that I was harmless.
Dr. Jenner stared at me intensely with his dark-rimmed eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked. His voice sounded rough, hoarse.
I cursed silently in my head.
Dr. Jenner wasn't like this when Rick and his group came here in the original work.
It seems like he had already lost hope then; that's why he was suicidal.
This one was not suicidal. He has not yet lost all hope.
He's still carrying hope's corpse on his shoulders, still grieving, still on the edge.
And that was a problem.
Because Dr. Edwin Jenner wasn't operating from a place of logic anymore, and that made him infinitely more dangerous and unpredictable.
I shook my head and answered, "My name is Zephyr Ward, former US military sergeant."
The rifle remained aimed at my chest.
His eyes narrowed.
The fluorescent lights overhead made the dark circles beneath them look even worse.
The man looked exhausted—not physically, spiritually.
"What do you want?" he asked, his M4A1 still held tightly in his hands.
"Information."
Silence.
Then—
A hollow, humorless laugh escaped him.
The sound echoed through the empty lobby.
"Information..." The word sounded bitter, broken.
His shoulders sagged. "Funny how that's what everyone and their mother wants these days."
I stayed quiet.
Sometimes silence accomplished more than talking.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then, he looked away.
Not at me—past me, as if seeing something that wasn't there anymore.
"We kept trying," the words came unexpectedly.
Not directed at me; they were simply spoken out loud.
"We kept researching." His grip tightened slightly on the rifle.
"Every lab..." His voice grew distant. "...every research center."
I remained still, listening.
"The British..."
A pause.
"...the Germans..."
Another pause.
"...the Asians..."
Another pause.
"...the French."
The last word lingered.
Something in his expression shifted—not hope, but the memory of hope.
"They lasted longer than most." His eyes focused somewhere beyond the lobby walls. "They kept transmitting after everybody else went dark. They said they were close to something... to answers."
The silence that followed felt heavy.
"Then one day..." He swallowed. "...they stopped answering, too."
His laugh returned, smaller this time, broken.
That was it.
The rifle lowered slightly more.
The last voices.
I understood immediately what he meant.
I knew the French had failed as well.
Then, his gaze drifted downward.
"Candace would have known what to do," the words escaped him before he could stop them, barely a whisper.
The rifle trembled.
"My wife always knew what to do."
His eyes unfocused, lost somewhere far away.
"I'm sorry." The apology wasn't for me; it was directed at a ghost, a woman who was no longer here.
The lobby fell silent.
I let it sit.
Didn't interrupt, didn't offer comfort.
Eventually, Jenner blinked and seemed to remember I was standing here.
"What exactly do you have out there?"
That was my opening.
"A community."
His eyebrow lifted.
I continued, "We've got farmland."
No reaction.
"Livestock."
Still nothing.
"We've restored electricity."
That got his attention.
A small flicker, nothing more.
"We've got doctors."
Now, his posture changed. "Doctors?"
I nodded. "Hershel Greene, a vet, and another physician named Gale Macones."
The scientist stared at me for several seconds.
"We've secured medicine. Lots and lots of it."
"How much?" he asked.
"Containers worth." His eyes went wide.
I continued calmly, "Food, fuel, tools... all in containers."
Then, I delivered what mattered.
"We've got kids."
The effect was immediate.
His rifle lowered completely.
Not because of supplies, nor was it because of doctors.
Because of children.
Proof that humanity still existed outside these walls.
Proof the world wasn't entirely dead.
Jenner closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, a long breath.
When he opened them again, the hardness had faded; only exhaustion remained.
"Come inside."
The massive glass barrier groaned as it continued rising.
I stepped through.
The temperature changed immediately—cooler, sterile, artificial.
Jenner then spoke, "VI, seal the main entrance and kill the power up here."
The glass barrier lowered behind me with a heavy metallic whir.
"Follow me," Jenner said before heading deeper inside.
Soon, we stepped into a large, darkened space.
"VI, bring up the lights to the big room," Jenner spoke again.
There was a beeping sound, then the place lit up, showing a wide research room littered with workspaces and large laboratory monitors.
Then, Dr. Jenner turned to me and lifted both his hands.
"Welcome to Zone Five."
He then turned to the monitor screen and said, "VI, play the... play the enhanced internal view of TS-19's brain."
"Who's VI?" I asked in practiced confusion, despite knowing who it was.
Jenner glanced back. "VI is an assistant AI that's operating the supercomputer here."
I nodded slowly.
Then, a neutral and clinical voice spoke:
"Playback of TS-19 is being displayed."
The main monitor then lit up, showing a video of a human brain inside a skull.
It appears to be lit with bright blue threads of energy.
Some areas are denser with light than others, but there are lighted threads throughout the skull.
The detail zooms in until the threads become closer and pulses of light can be distinguished.
Dr. Jenner then began to explain, "You see these lights?"
He points at the light threads. "It's a person's life experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you—the thing that makes you unique and human."
He paused before re-explaining, "Those are synapses. Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death."
"Death?" I echoed. "Death? That's what this is, a vigil?"
"Yes," Dr. Jenner said. "Or rather, the playback of a vigil."
"So this person died? Who was it?"
Dr. Jenner said, "Test Subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected… and volunteered to have us record the process... My wife."
A genuine pang of sympathy hit me.
Candace Jenner—the woman who died trying to save the world.
The woman whose death broke the man sitting next to me.
"VI, scan forward to the first event," Jenner called out.
"Scanning to first event," VI said.
The screen shows a message: "Scanning Forward."
The brain has lights still flickering in the outer areas, but the center has become dark, as if black roots were growing inside.
"What is that?" I said.
Dr. Jenner replied, "It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be… gone."
He then turned to the screen. "VI, show the second event."
"Scanning to second event," replied VI mechanically.
"The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute… seven seconds," Dr. Jenner said.
A red glow flickers at the base of the brain.
The rest remains dark.
Then, random sparks shoot out into the larger area of the brain, but no further lights grow.
"Is it restarting the brain?" I asked in practiced confusion.
"No," Dr. Jenner said,
"Just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving, but the part that matters—the frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part—that doesn't come back. The you part. What's left is just a shell driven by mindless instinct."
The subject moves; its mouth opens and closes.
The head moves side to side, the shoulders move as if the arms were being lifted.
The barrel of a gun appears at the forehead, pointing down.
A bullet enters the brain and tears through the red cluster of embers.
The brain goes completely dark, and the subject stops moving.
"You shot her?"
"Had to," he said, looking broken.
He kept staring at the monitor at that brain.
"Everyone turns," Dr. Jenner suddenly said.
"There's no preventatives" His eyes remained fixed on the floor. "No cure, no escape." Then he turned, looked straight at me. "Everyone's infected."
I stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "I know."
His head snapped toward me. "What?"
"I've seen bodies reanimated without bite marks." I leaned back slightly.
"Happened too many times to be a coincidence. Plus, I've happened across some documents in checkpoints that I've looted before, citing exactly that."
Dr. Jenner looked at me.
Then, for the first time since entering the CDC, Jenner actually laughed—a dark, short chuckle.
"Yeah, I suppose it wasn't difficult to figure out."
I glanced at him. "No. No, it wasn't."
(To be continued...)